Linux Installation

Preliminary notes

Before you begin the installation, please ensure that the system requirements are met.

If the MetaDefender Storage Security installer package dependencies are not installed on your system the installer will attempt to automatically download them over the internet.

Acquire the package

In order to acquire the package please visit https://www.opswat.com/solution

Please note that an online installation involves downloading the required docker images from Docker Hub. If image pulls fail, you may have reached Docker Hub's rate limits, especially when multiple services pull from the same IP address.

To address this, please consider one of the following solutions:

• Use docker login to increase your pull limit
• Implement image caching or registry proxies
• Stagger deployments to avoid concurrent pulls

Advanced installation

We recommend that production deployments use an external database and ensure that web traffic is encrypted. For detailed information on how to configure an external database or HTTPS see advanced installation section:

• Production Consideration Linux Deployments
• Production Considerations Windows Deployments

Debian / Ubuntu package (.deb)

1. Update your packages

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sudo apt update

2. Install the necessary package dependencies

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sudo apt install jq curl gnupg-agent software-properties-common

3. Move to the folder containing the installer and install it

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sudo dpkg -i <name of the file>.deb

4. After the installation is completed, check if everything went fine

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man mdss

or using the help menu

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sudo mdss -h

5. Run the following command in order to initialize MetaDefender Storage Security

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sudo mdss -u init

6. Start the service

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sudo mdss -c start

7. Optionally, you can check the status using the following command:

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sudo mdss -c status

8. Open a browser and navigate to the web interface http://<server> to configure your deployment.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS / Rocky package (.rpm)

In case the FORWARD chain policy is set to DROP, here are the commands to switch it to ACCEPT:

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# External → container (new connections)

iptables -I FORWARD -i eth0 -o cni-podman1 -j ACCEPT

# Container → external (return traffic for established connections)

iptables -I FORWARD -i cni-podman1 -o eth0 -m state --state RELATED,ESTABLISHED -j ACCEPT

1. Update your packages

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sudo yum -y update

2. Move to the folder containing the installer and install it

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sudo yum install -y <name of the file>.rpm

3. After the installation is completed, check if everything went fine

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sudo man mdss

or using the help menu

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sudo mdss -h

4. Run the following command in order to initialize MetaDefender Storage Security

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sudo mdss -u init

Note: If you don’t have docker already installed, the installer will do that for you, but you will be prompted to sign out and sign back in. This is necessary because your current user needs to be added to the docker group.

5. Start the service

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sudo mdss -c start

6. Optionally, you can check the status using the following command:

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sudo mdss -c status

7. Open a browser and navigate to the web interface http://<server> to configure your deployment.
8. If you are using firewall (on CentOS8 and RHEL 8) you may need to update it’s policies:

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# Check what interface docker is using, e.g. 'docker0'

ip link show

# Check available firewalld zones, e.g. 'public'

sudo firewall-cmd --get-active-zones

# Check what zone the docker interface it bound to, most likely 'no zone' yet

sudo firewall-cmd --get-zone-of-interface=docker0

# So add the 'docker0' interface to the 'public' zone. Changes will be visible only after firewalld reload

sudo nmcli connection modify docker0 connection.zone public

# Masquerading allows for docker ingress and egress (this is the juicy bit)

sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-masquerade --permanent

# Optional open required incomming ports (wasn't required in my tests)

# sudo firewall-cmd --zone=public --add-port=443/tcp

# Reload firewalld

sudo firewall-cmd --reload

# Reload dockerd

sudo systemctl restart docker

Podman Configuration

MDSS can also run using the Podman container engine instead of the default Docker one on RHEL operating systems. Podman, podman-docker and docker-compose need to be installed and running before installing MDSS.

# stop MDSS if is already installed

sudo mdss -c stop

# install podman, podman-docker and docker-compose

sudo yum install podman

sudo yum install podman-docker

sudo curl -SL https://github.com/docker/compose/releases/download/v2.15.1/docker-compose-linux-x86_64 -o /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/docker-compose

sudo systemctl enable podman.socket

sudo systemctl start podman.socket

# to disable selinux permanetly 'SELINUX=disabled' needs to be set in the following config file

sudo vim /etc/selinux/config

# reboot machine for changes take effect

sudo reboot

Once the Podman and Docker components are installed, proceed with the installation of MetaDefender Storage Security (MDSS). You can skip the installation if MDSS is already installed.

After installation, MDSS must be configured to skip the default Docker engine checks. This is achieved by setting SKIP_DOCKER_CHECKS=yes in the /etc/mdss/customer.env configuration file.

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# install additional MDSS dependencies (skip this if MDSS is already installed)

sudo subscription-manager repos --enable codeready-builder-for-rhel-8-$(arch)-rpms

sudo yum -y install https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/epel-release-latest-8.noarch.rpm

sudo yum install lvm2

sudo yum install wget

# install MDSS (skip this if MDSS is already installed)

sudo rpm -i mdss-x.x.x-1.noarch.rpm

# edit customer.env and add SKIP_DOCKER_CHECKS=yes

sudo vim /etc/mdss/customer.env

# start MDSS

sudo mdss -c start

Configure Automatic Service Startup at Boot on RHEL and Rocky Linux with Podman

Due to a technical limitation, on RHEL and Rocky Linux, MDSS will not start automatically after machine restarts. To enable this option, please follow these steps:

1. Create a service file

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sudo vi /etc/systemd/system/mdss.service

2. Paste the following content

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[Unit]

    Description=MDSS Stack

    After=network-online.target

    Wants=network-online.target

    [Service]

    Type=oneshot

    RemainAfterExit=yes

    ExecStart=mdss -c start

    [Install]

    WantedBy=multi-user.target

3. Save and exit the file (Esc + :wq!)
4. Enable the service

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sudo systemctl daemon-reload

sudo systemctl enable mdss.service

That's it. To confirm the changes were applied successfully, please restart your VM and then run sudo mdss -c status to make sure MDSS is up and running after reboot.